Just saw this last post on why St. Louis sucks and laughed my butt off! I can never go back. I´ve crossed the point of no return!

Funny short from The Onion:

In October, The Swedish Academy awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature to French-Mauritian author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.  Le Clezio has authored over forty novels, essays, and children’s books.  His first novel, Le Proces-verbal (The Interrogation), and Desert  are among his most famous.  Le Proces-verbal is about a deranged young man living on the fringe of modern society who ends up in a mental hospital.  Desert follows the life of a young woman from a nomadic tribe in North Africa who immigrates to France.  The book describes urban Europe from the eyes of an unwanted immigrant.  The Swedish Academy describes Le Clezio as “an author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy.”

Le Clezio was born in France to a Mauritian doctor and a French mother.  He spent much of his youth in Africa.  After finishing college, he spent years in Central America, including four years with an Indian tribe in Panama.  His world travels is reflected in the diverse settings of his novels.  His themes have evolved drastically between periods of his life and even between consecutive books, so he is unable to classify.

Before the announcement of Le Clezio as the winner, The Swedish Academy was the subject of considerable controversy due to statements made by its permanent secretary of literature, Horace Engdahl.  Engdahl asserted that American literature was “too isolated, too insular.  They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”  Engdahl went further in saying that “Europe still is the center of the literary world.”  Critics contend that Engdahl’s comments clearly demonstrate a bias against American writers, who haven’t won the prize since 1993 (Toni Morrison).  The announcement of Le Clezio as the 2008 winner further exacerbated the controversy, as he was virtually unknown even among academics.  Many of his works had never been translated into English.  In researching the author, I found some rare English copies for sale online for upwards of $1,000 – presumably by opportunistic entrepeneurs hoping to cash in before the award-inspired translations and reprints hit the market.

While the fact that Le Clezio is almost inaccessible in the States may support Engdahl’s argument that American literature isn’t worldly enough, a closer examination of past winners can lend to the argument that there is a bias at the foundation.  Most are as unrecognizable to me as Le Clezio.  It makes sense that, in a a flat world where borders mean less and globalization reigns supreme, the most relevant writing will come from worldly authors like Le Clezio and other past winners.  At the same time, indicators of bias are glaring.  I am currently reading 2007 winner Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing about a murder in apartheid South Africa.  While it did come ten years prior, it is no To Kill a Mockingbird.  On the other hand, Lessing was a fervent activist for causes including communism and ending apartheid.  Click here to read an article in which Lessing says that 9/11 was “not that bad.”   She contended it was less severe than the IRA terror against the UK, which culminated in the 1984 bombing of parliament that killed five.  Lessing went on to say that Americans are “a very naive people.”

Being an American, I am inclined to conclude that there is a bias in the selection of the Nobel Prize for Literature.  As a bibliophile, I am unbiased in concluding that Lessing is no John Updike, Mario Vargas Llosa, or Salman Rushdie – none of whom have won the award and happen to represent four countries on as many continents.

The Economist ran an excellent article about the looming debate on the proper role of capitalism and deregulation.  Click here to read “Capitalism at Bay.”

Highlights:

“In the short term defending capitalism means, paradoxically, state intervention.”
 
“This time governments are buying banks (or shares in them) because they believe, rightly, that public capital is needed to keep credit flowing.”
 
“Even if it staves off disaster, the bail-out will cause huge problems. It creates moral hazard: such a visible safety net encourages risky behaviour. It may also politicise lending.”
 
“Capitalism’s defenders need to deal with two sorts of criticism … The weaker, populist argument is that Anglo-Saxon capitalism has failed … A second group of critics focuses on deregulation in finance, rather than the economy as a whole.  This case has much more merit. Finance needs regulation. It has always been prone to panics, crashes and bubbles (in Victorian times this newspaper was moaning about railway stocks, not house prices). Because the rest of the economy cannot work without it, governments have always been heavily involved.”
 
“Yet the failures of modern finance cannot be blamed on deregulation alone. After all, the American mortgage market is one of the most regulated parts of finance anywhere: dominated by two government sponsored agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and guided by congressional schemes to increase home-ownership.”
 
“There was something of a perfect storm in which policy mistakes combined with Wall Street’s excesses.”
 
“Indeed, history suggests that a prejudice against more rules is a good idea. Too often they have unintended consequences, helping to create the next disaster. And capitalism, eventually, corrects itself. After a crisis investors (and for that matter regulators) seldom make exactly the same mistake twice. There are, for instance, already plans for clearing houses for CDSs.”
 
“Capitalism is at bay, but those who believe in it must fight for it. For all its flaws, it is the best economic system man has invented yet. “

CDS stands for credit-default swap.  This video explains them in layman’s terms:

We play this video around the office a lot.  I like to imitate Chavez’ accent while saying “Mr. Danger”.  It’s hard to believe the guy goes on for three and a half minutes!  To provide context, this April 2006 ‘speech’ follows a February statement from the US State Department asserting that Hugo Chavez was the greatest “danger” facing democracy in Latin America.

World-famous stencil graffiti artist, Banksy, has been in New Orleans to highlight the state of that city’s clean up operation three years after Hurricane Katrina.

Fire, Not Explosives, Felled Third Tower on 9/11, Report Says (NY Times)

The Atlantic Cover

Nicholas Carr is a management guru on the forefront of business ideas concerning technology.  His most famous piece, “Does IT Matter?” featured in Harvard Business Review, asserted at the height of companies investing in Information Systems technology that IT would move toward commoditization and could not provide competitive advantage.